Oboe & English Horn is a collection of virtual instrument plug-ins for Windows and Mac OS X.
Oboe & English Horn utilizes Samplemodeling's proprietary SWAM engine (Synchronous Wavelength Acoustic Modeling) developed by Stefano Lucato & Emanuele Parravicini.
Oboe & English Horn use samples as a base material, chromatically performed by a professional player over a very wide dynamic range, and recorded with state-of-the-art technology. The resulting timbre is therefore that of the real instrument. But the analogy with a sample based library ends here. The underlying, proprietary technology allows continuous interpolation among different vectors like time, dynamics, pitch and formants. Advanced real time processing techniques yield realistic legato, vibrato, squeak, overblow, ornamentations & trills, pitchbends, subharmonics, growl and flutter tongue to be performed in real time.
This product is in my humble opinion victim of a misunderstanding, by first users and testers/demo makers as well. It has been criticized starting from first impression due to several examples made with a bit symplistic approach:
- playing it with EWI wind controller: it's a wonderful and musical experience, I do it myself, but it's not the way of getting by the instrument the best, because interacting in real time with the articulation parameters is not possible. The breath control is really good for the dynamic, but the vibrato rate can't be replicated, as the attck nuances.
- playing it as a synth: again playability is wonderful and expressive, like a keyboard synth of top quality, but it can't provide the realism of sample libraries well programmed.
The SWAM winds are in my honest opinion inferior to the SampleModeling Kontakt brass and saxophones, but still they are interesting VI: programming them the amount and quality of the articulations one can create is by far better than any library of prerecorded samples,and it create a natural and realistic feeling if properly programmed.
Please listen to my demo of Haendel Watermusic for a musical sample of the concept above.
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